20 Terrible Songs By Great Bands

Feeling down about your last crappy Tweet or unliked Instagram pic or, if you have a real job, something bad you did there (you messed up the finance or something?) It never hurts to take a moment to remember that even the greatest artists in rock history have released their fair share of embarrassing moments, and we've collected 20 of the most egregious examples for our self-assuring, Schadenfreudic pleasure. Enjoy/don't!

1. Mick Jagger and David Bowie  "Dancing In The Street"

Two of the greatest frontmen in rock n' roll history join forces for something that feels like a shitty 'by-committee' Super Bowl commercial, only they never actually mention the product and none of the greenscreening special effects are done so it's just the two of them on an empty street:

Suck Highlight: There's no shortage of inexplicable moments (is Mick drinking the can at 1:30 even part of the video?), but what exactly is Bowie doing in this shot?

2. Dee Dee Ramone  "Funky Man"

Released under the funkeefly moniker "Dee Dee King", the Ramones' iconic bassist released a hip-hop single in 1987 that's essentially on par with Barney's Fruity Pebbles rapping. Also, this video couldn't be more late-80s if it were literally an anthropomorphic red Adidas sweatshirt telling a Lite Brite to "Tear down this wall!" (and pointing to a wall of Topps gumsticks).

Suck Highlight: The chorus at the 0:55 mark with the door slamming repeatedly to the beat confirms that this is both the best song and music video ever recorded.

3. The Beatles  "Wild Honey Pie"

A firm fixture in the small canon of notoriously crapped-on Beatles songs alongside "Revolution 9" and to a lesser extent "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", but whereas "Revolution" seems like throwaway filler nothingness, "Wild Honey Pie" sounds like it's specifically written to piss you off, so it cracks the list. Is that just nonsense justification for why we're including one song instead of the other? I'll let YOU be the judge of that (the judge who goes "Yes. Also check out my judge wig.") You're wearing a judge wig in that impression.

Suck Highlight: The song is only a minute long, but the fact that it pops up in the middle of an album side that starts with "Back In The USSR" and "Dear Prudence" and ends with "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and "Happiness Is A Warm Gun" really highlights the crappitude.

4. The Kinks  "Labour of Love"

Ray Davies, one of rock's greatest songwriters, was also somehow responsible for this weirdly literal ode to marriage that feels like sewn-together spare parts from observational comedians' standup bits in 1993. I can only make it through this full song by pausing it every ten seconds to listen to the Village Green album in its entirety.

Suck Highlight: The "Here Comes The Bride" electric riff at the beginning is indeed a labour of I don't know, something bad. Whatever's bad to be a "labour" of. Hammers and shit?

5. Guns n' Roses  "My World"

Funny that there's a song on Use Your Illusion II where the band postulates that Bob Guccione Jr. is "pissed off cuz your dad gets more pussy than you," and it's not even CLOSE to the most inexplicable thing on the album. Just get "Sweet Child o' Mine" in your head, remember what that song sounds like, then click play and listen to "My World":

Suck Highlight: G'n'R was my favorite band for about a 5-year period of my youth, and "My World" was the last song on the last album the original band lineup did together. Which means, this band's final moment was Axl yelling "You ain't been mindfucked yet!" followed by 20 seconds of orgasm noises.

6-7. Ringo Starr  "Never Without You" and "Liverpool 8"

Ringo takes a lot of flak amongst Beatles fans / everyone for riding the coattails of three of pop music's most talented visionaries, but it's sometimes overblown, because he's also a perfectly fine drummer who also contributed a handful of his own hits. However, all Ringo criticism suddenly seems UNDERBLOWN when you listen to two of his post-2000 solo songs, "Never Without You" (an attempted George Harrison tribute) and "Liverpool 8", which are both songified versions of the sentence "Hey! Remember when we were in The Beatles??"

Suck Highlight: The rhymes on both songs are excruciating, but the chorus of "Never Without You" is Ringo literally telling the deceased Harrison "Here Comes The Sun is about you". The song George Harrison wrote. Cool.

8. The Police  "Mother"

This bizarre track off Synchronicity is the sole reason The Police broke up, I've just decided now.

Suck Highlight: It's 3:09 long. At least "Wild Honey Pie" had the decency to get tired of itself after the first minute.

9. The Who  "Real Good Lookin' Boy"

This was one of two new 'Bonus Tracks' The Who released on their 2004 Then And Now compilation, thus forever calling into question any positive connotations of the word "Bonus".

Suck Highlight: At the 1:32 mark, "Have you ever seen a teen fly so hiiiiigh?" Hard to believe this is the same edgy, in-your-face band that recorded "Squeeze Box". (Yes, that's a sarcastic example, please don't comment "Seriously???" Or please do comment "Awesome sarcastic example, Dan, also from looking at your avatar I'll bet ur great at giving people sex orgasms!")

10. Pearl Jam  "Bugs"

Much of Pearl Jam's third album, Vitalogy, was allegedly a self-conscious attempt by the band to retain credibility by taking some weird risks instead of just piggybacking off the success of their first two albums. On one hand, this approach seems artistically defensible, but on the other hand, here's the song "Bugs":